How proud King Carlos must have been
as the Armada fleet set sail
He could not know that those brave men
would drown, and the invasion fail.

Charles Stuart thought his word was law
and swore the Puritans would feel regret.
Charles, who was  already short,
would wind up getting shorter yet.


Consider, too,the Bourbon King;
who married Marie Antoinette;
The guillotine loves royal blood too.
The Deluge came and he got wet.

Banksters lusting for their bonus
who really ought to be in jail
made us make good all their losses
because they were too big to fail.

Our nation teeters at the top
of a twenty trillion dollar debt
If interest rates creep too much higher
I think you know what happens next.

Am I insane?
I simply can't tell.
Always chattering away,
but just to myself.

Behind the walls
and underneath the blankets,
there lives a ravenous girl
who dreams up a place
that's not full of loneliness.

The eye that sees, always cries.
The mouth that speaks, often lies
the smile of many, is to insist
on making you believe, that trust exists.
Pay attention, my beloved son:
use the body to stay, the spirit to run;
the courage to breath and wisdom to earn;
the power to conquer and mistakes, to learn.
You'll need lots of mistakes, and the worst defeat
to command the wind and bring the sun at your feet.
You'll need to cry rivers to make your ocean vast,
then talk nicely and smile to bring fish to your nest,
so that the shark that's inside you can feed with haste,
and you will grow bigger and wiser than the rest.
But remember one thing about your ocean creation:
the tears you use must all be yours,
so that while you build your castle, you'll learn all its doors.
Though beware of smiley friends and Mother Temptation.

through her window, she watched
sun shafts through the trees, a transient
tapestry on her potholed lane

a half dozen eggs sat beside her bowl
ready to be beat for the scramble; a half dozen
hours after her street was alight with noise

first the pernicious pop of the zip guns
then the cops '38s; then the howling of the
sirens, the howling of the survivors

mostly Chico's mama and sister
who watched him gunned down, and tried to plug
his half dozen holes with their hands

the street doesn't remember, she thought,
even with a biography of black blood dried
in its cracks and crevices

if it did, surely it would protest, or
make a solemn sound when the dawn shed
all that honest light on dark death

she cracked the eggs, put them
in the hot lard, not bothering with the bowl
breaking yolks blindly in the black skillet

I'm sorry, but these words aren't going to spin a story from silver or light up stars in the sky
Sometimes, the poems just can't be beautiful

Beautiful is strange in that it has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with the pupils of your eyes
Like when I was little, I knew I was beautiful
Different beautiful than the other girls in my family-
Like a cherub with ringlet curls in the midst of hour-glass princesses-
But beautiful

I grew up a little and it had the opposite effect than you'd expect
Looking at my tall dancer friends somehow made me more stubbornly insistent that I was beautiful too
But differently, I noticed more now
More chest, more cheeks, all compacted into the rough shape of what a girl should be
So maybe more clasically pretty than a beauty

And then the depression, and then I lost weight
And for the first time, I could slide my hands up my sides and admit to myself that maybe they'd all been right
And that I'd been too fat and
Well, if anything good could come out of the depression it was that I was almost beautiful now,
Beautiful the way the world wanted me to be

And suddenly fear coiled around my throat, a viper paralyzing me with the idea that
I could easily fall back to before
A noose, for every time I tried to put food in my mouth

I started spending too much time by the mirror with my
shirt pulled up to my chest
So I could see the wedges of my ribs pushing through, like weeds cracking headstones at a cemetary
So I could run my hands over my collarbones and marvel at their solidity
Ignoring the cold cavern of my stomach and the shaking of my hands
Determining that 1200 calories a day was the recommendation to
lose weight at my short stature,
So I'd eat that, but somewhere in the back of my head it seemed simpler to round down to a thousand instead

You know what they say the difference between anorexia and dieting is?
They say that dieters have a goal in mind, a weight where they'll be happy whereas anorexics...
In my head, there was no goal, just less and less of me for the world to deal its deck of cards on
Because beautiful didn't matter any more and weightlessness was its replacement

I don't want to be like this
I wasted hours online, by the mirrors, shaking of cold and dizziness in my bed
I don't want to be like this
An alien structure of concavity and wasted bones the only end to this path
I refuse to be like this

I don't know if it works that way
But the laws of physics breakdown at some point anyway and so I will defy my own mind
I have watched this threat hurtle toward me, have seen it with through the pupils of my own eyes,
And it doesn't say very good things about my vision if I let myself be pushed to the side
A leaf ripped away by the wind

I will resist
I will feast on my fears
I will reclaim beautiful as my own, and project it, child-like, on every piece of my world

I refuse to be anorexic
And I will savor every taste of this life I can get
Before I die.

I love her
Not in a ****** way, but
She's my friend, my friend
She helps me so much
For 7 years Ive known her
Laughed and cried with her
She hugs me and my daughter
Makes sure my house is in order
She has capabilities that I do not
I fear for her
She isn't supposed to be here
With her brown skin and Spanish tongue
She works hard
And I love her
And I'm so afraid for her
I don't understand fences
Or "papers of belonging", citizenship
I was born privileged
Free and white
In America
Because my ancestor came here 340 years ago
And begat generation after generation of my blood
I wonder if he had to have papers?
Her journey here nearly killed her
Sent by her mother, with a bottle of water and an aluminum foil wrapped sheep sandwich
Across the dessert
For just the idea of a better life
She was 16 Then
I love her
And by the GOD that loves every colour and nation,
I'll marry her before I let her be dragged into one of those big vans they put "illegals" in

We gave it a shot
and as the medicine cooled and chilled the veins
it mended the illness pooled within
and oh what rush
but as the days past there was a need
a need for more
the darkness was seeping back in
and only doses where given
minimal but satisfying
heart-wrenching but heart-mending
what better medicine then love
oh but in truth what worse
It clings to the heart
and intwines itself with all that it surrounds
once those doses are up  
the pain floods back in
the shakes
the pit
the tears
are what take over
they devour whats left
and shrivel you up
and take its place as that constant cycle
reminding what life is like
pain filled and alone
"try again" it’ll tease
but instead you’ll cower and hide
in your defeat
"this my surrender" you’ll say
and hope to God you’ll listen.

“I Hope Your Happy Now Your Free”
Free from the eternal feelings
From the bleeding heart 
the one I played before you 
Those words are now cut 
short of what was to be said 
But be happy this was all a game
like its always been
This all was foolish
I became the fool
 believing
believing that I was all you see
I was blind to my mistake 
your heart was not mine to take
so go on 
I’ll get out of your way 
“I Hope Your Happy Now Your Free”

Breathe me in like your last cigarette,
because you swear you're going to quit,
as the smoke swirls past your head
and heads east.

Drain my cup like the last coffee
you pour yourself, even though it's 11 pm
and you really should go to bed soon
because you never sleep enough.

Color between my lines like you tried
to show your little sister, when she stole
your colored pencils and scribbled
all through your sketchbook.

Give me the kind of attention you give
sunset on the beach,
because someting about it makes time stop
and brings you peace.

Love me,
even though the only time you ever thought
love just might be more than a façade or a con
left you detached and empty.

Love me,
because I promise
I'm already trying
to love you.

I am so tired of shining lights
on my bedroom walls late at night
to make shadow puppets
so that I feel less alone.